Mobile telephones have evolved during the last few years from being simple voice communication devices to present day intelligent communication terminals having processing and communication capabilities that were almost unimaginable not long ago. Needless to say, the use of a mobile telephone now involves such activities as interactive message exchange in the form of “chatting”, sending e-mail messages, browsing the World Wide Web as well as many other activities, both business related as well as more leisure oriented. Moreover, the operation of current communication terminals is often controlled via user interface means that include, in addition to or instead of traditional keypads, touch sensitive displays on which a virtual keypad is displayed. A user inputs text and other symbols using a stylus by touching the virtual keypad.
The application interactive messaging, chatting, has become very widely used, particularly among young people and the exchange of information typically involve text as well as other, non-textual, symbols. In particular, so-called “smileys” were invented as a cultural extension to plain textual symbols and digits. Originally these smileys were formed as plain text characters, like :-) and ;(. However, in current messaging and chatting applications, smileys are also provided as unique non-textual symbols, which are small graphical bitmaps.
A drawback with current terminals is that they typically display a plurality of, or all, possible non-textual symbols, including the smileys, for selection by the user. Current messaging and chat protocols typically support dozens of different smiley symbols, and their amount is on the increase. Hence, at least when considering terminals that are equipped with small display devices, simultaneously displaying a large number of smileys, which is preferable when operating a chatting application, may be considered as an unnecessary visual distraction from a user point of view and may be seen as an inefficient or clumsy method of selection.